The Business Case
From 2012 onwards I had the privilege to lead the €30 mln public and private investment agenda behind the IDH (www.idhtrade.org) Sustainable Coffee Program (SCP) with a.o. large coffee roasters like Nestlé, Douwe Egberts Master Blenders, Mondelez, Tchibo and Mother Parker. We aimed high: supporting sustainable coffee to grow globally from 8% in 2010 to 25% in 2015 by addressing especially the systemic challenges in the sector regarding climate adaptation, farming practices & income improvement, access to credits, position of women and youth and government policies. Chairing these company delegations in visits to senior corporate and government representatives in countries like Vietnam, Colombia, Uganda, Brazil, Indonesia and Ethiopia was an incredible inspiring experience. It was a living proof for me that just bringing the right actors together in the right mindset around the relevant bottlenecks is the way to go. Competitive agenda’s of companies were adjusted to collective agenda’s and governments understood how supporting policies for sustainable production in their country improve the global competitiveness of their country.
Improving productivity in Uganda, reducing water use in Vietnam, addressing pesticides issues in Brazil and Indonesia; availability of knowledge and capital were not the bottleneck. It all came down to aligning and focussing efforts of multiple actors to scale “investments 4impact”. This ambitious farmer impact agenda was later continued in the Global Coffee Platform (GCP; www.globalcoffeeplatform.org ) , the merge between the Sustainable Coffee Program and the 4CPlatform that I have been leading as Chairman of the Board in 2016/2017. The Global Coffee Platform has 150 members that together represent 40% of global trade volume and 25% of global roasting volume. GCP has worked on the establishment of public-private platforms in 6 of the largest producing countries.
